Reverse engineering

Reverse engineering is a process that consists in studying an existing object or system in order to understand its internal workings, its components and its operating mechanisms. It means taking an existing product and taking it apart to understand how it was made and how it works. The process can be applied to physical products, but also to software or computer systems.

Reverse engineering can be used for various reasons, such as reverse engineering competing products to understand how they work and design similar or better suited products, recovering data from obsolete or damaged systems, or searching for security vulnerabilities in computer systems.

It can however also be used unlawfully, notably for the infringement of products protected by patents or other intellectual property rights. Laws and regulations consequently govern the lawful use of reverse engineering in different countries.

Reverse engineering can raise several problems for intellectual property and trade secrets, notably:

1. Violation of intellectual property. If the dismantled product or software is protected by a patent, a copyright or any other intellectual property right, reverse engineering may be regarded as a violation of those rights, which can lead to legal disputes and proceedings.
2. Counterfeiting. Reverse engineering can be used to copy a product or software and create a copy that infringes the original product, which can cause significant financial losses for the companies whose products are unlawfully copied.
3. Disclosure of trade secrets. Reverse engineering can also be used to reveal the commercial secrets or confidential information of a company, such as design plans, production data or manufacturing processes. This can give a competitive advantage to other companies and reduce the commercial value of the company whose secrets were disclosed.

Because of these problems, many companies protect their products and software through security measures such as encryption, source code obfuscation or the use of anti reverse engineering technologies. Intellectual property and trade secrets laws may also be used to protect the rights of product owners and companies against the unlawful use of reverse engineering.

It should be distinguished from software decompilation, which is a similar but different concept.

Whether reverse engineering is lawful depends on the protection measures actually in place at the complaining party, a point we examine in a trade secrets audit.